My parents have both recently died. (Of old age basically). I know that my siblings and I are a bit odd in that none of us are religious at all and have no desire to follow socially acceptable funeral traditions. For my dad, the only service we had was the military honors at the veteran’s cemetery attended only by immediate family. My mom died earlier this week. We are not holding any service for my mom. She will be interred with my dad at the veteran’s cemetery, and I do plan to visit once her name has been added.There are no extended family members to attend a service, and my parents did not have any close friends. Today I received a request that struck me as creepy and inappropriate; however, I thought I would come on here and ask for opinions from people who have more knowledge of such things. My mom has had a private caregiver whom she hired and paid for on her own I found the lady’s name but had never met her before she started working for my mom. The caregiver has been with my mom for a little over 2 years. This caregiver became what I feel like is inappropriately attached to parents, but describing all the things will take too long. This morning the caregiver called me and asked if she could have some of Mom’s ashes. My first instinct was to say no way, but all I said was “I am not prepared to make that decision right now.” The woman is very emotional and upset, and I don’t know how to handle it. It seems as if she is wanting us to provide emotional support and bond with her as if she was a family member. My siblings and I have never interacted with her in that way, and we don’t want to for many reasons I won’t get into now. My plan for now if I have to talk to her again is to say something like “I know you are upset, but I cannot be your emotional support right now”. Really, I just want to ghost her and stop answering her calls at all, but that feels mean. We already gave her some person items of mom’s that she requested and a generous severance check. So, what do you think? Is this “normal” behavior on her part? Am I being unreasonable or going to far against social norms?

If you are just wanting information about Medicare, Medicare supplements, and social security. Search for The Medicare Family on YouTube. There are lots of short videos that really helped me when I was trying to understand all that stuff for my parents.

I also use the Plackers Grind no more. I have tried several brands of the kind that are supposed to not be disposable, but I end up chewing through them rather quickly.

One thing I used to like as a kid was leftover rice, either cold or warm, with some sugar and milk (milk substitute). I like it with raisins but plain is good too.

I’ve never felt any societal pressure to hide my gray, however, I’m 53 and didn’t start getting noticeable gray until my early 40’s. The only comment I’ve ever gotten was from a 5th grader who had purple streaks in her own hair. She told my she liked my shiny streaks. I guess she thought I did it on purpose. My DH started going gray in his mid 20’s. He has never done anything to hide that, but he is often mistaken for being much older than he really is. When we first moved your current small town, he was already almost all white but only 45. He got invited to eat lunch at the Senior’s Center. He had to ask how old he needed to be and then had to tell the ladies that he would have to wait 15 yrs.

My suggestion is to talk to those who have worked with her regularly. They should have a better idea of what works or doesn’t work for her.

I take advantage of his sports time to do things that I want to do by myself. While organizing the pantry shelves doesn’t sound like a fun activity, it is much worse when he tries to “help”.

I have a solitaire game that has lots of different of different versions. Bonus it that it uses very little battery.

Not exactly the same situation, but I have a difficult mother who could not admit to the amount of care she really needed and expected her kids to do everything for her. I learned to say “ You are legally allowed to make those decisions even though I do not agree with your choice; however, I am not required to help you do things that I do not agree with”. I agree with everyone else that you need to hold firm and not help them maintain a situation that you think is wrong for you MIL.

Happens all the time where I live (higher elevations). I have gotten used to packages popping open on my drive home over the mountains.

My first thought was has the mama cat been “fixed”?

In some states it is illegal to require or force a worker to be around smokers (such as places where it is illegal to smoke inside a bar). I would think that a company/service that requires workers to be in a client’s home for any length of time would be able to select individual workers that do not mind being around the second hand smoke. In the above example of a home healthcare worker and a bedridden patient, I have seen in my recent experiences with parents in nursing homes that the workers who are smokers will take the patients who are smokers outside to the approved smoking area and help them as needed.

I think the new parents were perfectly fine and normal to put such restrictions in place if they want to do so. Just because a practice used to be socially acceptable to previous generations does not mean that it should continue even if the older generation doesn’t want to change. I could give lots of non-childbearing examples, but I don’t want to start more arguments.

Not an individual, but I know the sheriff’s department in my county looked at establishing an animal shelter. Even when a property with a building was going to be given to the, the price tag to start up was going to be about $1,000,000. That was not for a no-kill shelter either. There are lots of legal requirements that make it an expensive process.

I used to put a blanket on the floor before putting my baby on the floor, but I never expected the baby to stay there without direct supervision. I don’t consider that “blanket training”. The only time I have ever heard people describing a practice called “blanket training” it has been in regards to the Duggar/Pearl methodology. You can use any terminology you want, but if someone says “blanket training” to me, I will immediately jump to thinking that is abusive.

opps, I erased the quote and don’t want to fix it, but it was just the statement that it wasn’t all bad. I don’t want to pick on you or your parents, but this part stuck out to me. There are probably a few kids whose entire childhood was “all bad”, but most kids raised in abusive home, or who experienced abuse at the hands of family members, can pick out specific events or times that “weren’t all bad”. Most kids still love their parents and want parent approval even after experiencing abuse. That is evident on these boards from all the threads where people talk about their narcissistic parents. I think that is a really low bar with which to judge a parent-child relationship. Religious conservatism doesn’t have to be abusive (I don’t really know, I am just assuming). In the case of the Duggars, I think the religious aspect of their family has been used by certain members of the family to as a smoke screen to cover up the abuse, but even if the family had not chosen those religious beliefs, the abusive people would still have been abusive, just maybe in different ways, but maybe the adult children would have had the resources to get away from the abuse earlier. Maybe the abusers would have faced consequences earlier. However, that is a whole lot of maybes.

As far a water based PT, check with you local PT clinics. The place I have used for PT has its own small pool for water based exercise. They keep it warmer than a traditional recreational pool.

I wear basically the same uniform in a similar setting. I wear Brooks and or Hoka’s with jeans, but I do like to wear bright colored and patterned tops in nice weather. I mostly wear hoodies in cold weather, but I do have a collection of hoodie type tops that don’t all look like typical teenager hoodies.

I know that there are lots of issues with your mom, but I will admit that your descriptions of your large family gatherings sound very overwhelming to me. If I was in a similar setting, I would likely find a book and try to go off on my own, or at least tune out by reading. I can image that many elder people who live alone or in a much smaller family group might feel overwhelmed with such a large gathering. As I have experienced my parents aging, I have notice that their ability to handle large groups and more than one person talking at a time decreases dramatically.

I live in an area with lots of annoying deer in town. While not common, a couple of years ago one dog was attacked and killed by a deer. The dog’s owner was injured fighting the deer. I have had one in my yard this spring start to move toward my dog, and I immediately got the dog inside. Found out later that there were 2 babies near by. Usually the deer are more cautious around people. I do make sure to talk and make noise when there are deer in the yard.

Just a warning - the Legoland in Grapvine is not the same as the Legoland in Florida. I do think a 10-11 yr old will have fun there (mine did) but it didn’t seem like an all day experience. The rides are cute, but a 10-11yr old could be on the edge of too big for some of them. If you decide you need another activity, Meow Wolf is also in the Grapevine mall. If you can tolerate the crazy noise and bad pizza, there is a Chuckie Cheese as well. My DS loved going to CC for his birthdays. Even without a scheduled bday party, you can purchase a cake when you walk in.

As long as it is in the same state, the prescription can be filled at any pharmacy.

I don’t know anyone who had a long term bad result from the vaccine. I do know 1 person who has had long term, probably permanent, heart damage from having the infection. I know people of all ages who have been fully vaccinated. The person with the heart damage is late 40’s, overweight, female if that makes any difference.

I work in a district that does have a SW for kids who are already on ieps. Mostly she works with them on social skills. Most of the older kids she works with are not labeled as AU. They do have a variety of other labels. I overheard a conversation last year that the district could choose to contract with her agency for support of other students, but that isn’t what the district had chosen to do. At that time the district’s one school counselor was supposed to do all her other duties which included guild counseling for the high school and state testing coordinator along dealing with students with undiagnosed emotional issues. Other districts that I have worked for had even less SW support that my current district provides. As far as ADHD goes, a student making all A’s even with behavioral issues would almost never get an IEP at any district I have worked. They would say that there is no “educational need”. An additional problem in the US with testing and identification for SPED services is at the federal legal. To combat past issues of over-identifying students from minority groups or those that do not speak English, schools are limited in the percentage of students that can be identified as having a disability, and they are also monitored in regards to the percentage of students who are tested that do not end up qualifying. This results in districts moving through the identification process at a snail’s pace to keep with in those imposed limits.

My DS used to have one like this https://www.household-management-101.com/lego-storage-and-sorter-box-keep-those-legos-out-from-underfoot.html And one like this https://www.ebay.com/itm/LEGO-IRIS-Building-Block-Storage-Container-6-Drawer-Tower-Sorting-Bin-Organizer/334956163253?pageci=91680eb0-fffc-4d33-9a80-d20293729636&redirect=mobile if I’d known how much they go for on eBay I would have sold ours instead of giving it away. Darn